Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Love: 50/50

I’ve found trying to concisely appraise 50/50 pretty difficult. Each
time I’ve tried, up until now, has involved a sloppy mess of a first paragraph
attempting to throw the cancer dramedy up against any number of its ‘young (or
youngish) people suffering’ counterparts.
I haven’t seen Gus Van Sant’s Restless
yet, so mainly I keep bumping up against Love Story and Love and Other
Drugs as my most recently viewed entries in the “this shouldn’t be
happening” subgenre. Those two films, to
put it bluntly, sucked. They wear their tragedy like a sadistic merit
badge and attempt to solicit your tears
via cloyingly saccharine falsehoods and the crimes not only of dying too
young, but of leaving behind a widowed lover like a lost puppy. 50/50 doesn’t
do that. Or, that is, it doesn’t do it in
the way we’re used to. While its young protagonist faces the dizzyingly
surprising odds of not making it to his 28th birthday, the film
neither stoops to snatching at your emotions or dumbly launches on a feel-good “I’m
going to conquer my bucket list” adventure.
We don’t see the power of positive thinking, we simply see the process
of being, well, a sometimes optimistic but generally depressed lump.

The film focuses on Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a smart guy
with the sort of life many a young hipster will covet: public radio producing
gig, artist girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), neat little house in Seattle;
that is, until a chance visit to a doctor finds him discovering that he’s been
unknowingly suffering from a spinal cancer.
The news is a blow not only to Adam, but to his family and friends. His mother (Angelica Huston) immediately
announces her intention to move in, his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen) is
angered and dumbstruck, his co-workers fatalistically compare Adam’s situation
with those of other people in their lives at an odd party in Adam’s honor. Everything
is crisp, concise, uncomplicated in its complications. The plot flows effortlessly. We tag along as Adam begins chemotherapy, as
he walks stoned through the hospital halls, as he waits for his girlfriend to
pick him up, as he begins therapy with Katherine, an awkward 24-year old doctoral
candidate (Anna Kendrick). The film finds the humorous moments in what
would normally be dour. Everything is
cheery when you’re stoned. Shaving your
head before the hair falls out if hilarious if you use the razor your friend
uses for his balls.

Though Adam’s suffering is downplayed (from what I
understand, anyone who’s encountered cancer will tell you the symptoms here are
not presented in full), we don’t need to be shown everything to understand that
this is horrible. What we see instead of
an outpouring of love is the way people try to cope and the loneliness that
results when people can’t. Adam’s friend
Kyle tries to put a spin on his friend’s illness. He distracts them both by making it a game, a
tactic to get them both laid. Rachael,
Adam’s girlfriend, tries to be supportive, but isn’t prepared to take on the responsibilities
that come with watching a casual lover falter.
As his situation changes, Adam becomes defined by his illness. It’s part of him, a constant topic of
conversation, and something no one seems able to stop talking about. By the
film’s climax, the old Adam is already dead in many ways and the present Adam
mourns that loss daily. Gordon-Levitt is
remarkably effective in this role. He
has a sort of boy next door aura about him that makes him appealing and
sincere. We see all the manifestations
of his pain and we want him to make it.
If he feels authentic, that’s because he is. Adam is a character based in reality. The film’s writer, Will Reiser is a real-life
friend of Seth Rogen’s who did, in fact, find himself diagnosed with the very
same ailment. While 50/50 presents a fictionalized account, there’s little doubt it remains
very much his (or their) story. While I’ve
never subscribed to the “write what you know” approach to storytelling, on this
particular topic it seems ‘being there’ is a valuable asset. 50/50 manages
an even-keeled humanity in all
elements. The comedy never tries too
hard, but instead comes through in unexpected ways as the film makes the best
of what Adam himself can’t see in the moment.
It’s a comforting nightmare that
finds a bit of good with the bad and weaves them both into something easily
consumable.